Complaining About Crappy Service

From time to time, people leave comments here about bad experiences with TTC service. One recent observation dealt with irregular headways and unexpected short turns on night services.

When this sort of thing happens to you, be sure to note the time, date, location and especially the vehicle number(s). Whether the TTC will actually do anything about your problems is hard to say, but it’s essential that when you do complain, you have specifics.

The TTC talks a good line about customer service, and they need to be held to account when they screw up.

To readers who are operators: I am not looking to bash anyone, and our friends at CIS Control probably have a lot to do with problems. However, where things happen, especially repeatedly, that show a disregard for the quality of transit service and the riders, those responsible need to know that wonderful service is not the product actually on offer.

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18 thoughts on “Complaining About Crappy Service”

It’s beyond time for a late night guarantee … if Go Transit can do it during rush hour, the TTC has to be able to do it between 130am-5am.

If you wait for more than 30 minutes at any blue night stop between 130am-5am, we’ll pay for a cab to any location where the blue night system goes … just submit the receipt, if it checks out with the GPS system, we’ll cover the cost … maybe even just run that guarantee during the winter when it’s really annoying, ridiculous and sometimes unsafe to wait for transit.

Unlike YRT, I have yet to be thrown out by the TTC in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night at a stop with no shelter during a freezing rainstorm with no explanation and no info on when the next bus is coming. Oh, and later on be told that it was all because the bus was displaying the wrong route number the whole time, hence the bus driver could just throw me off into a freezing rainstorm for an hour with no explanation. That taught me A) always carry a cell and B) when travelling in York Region, use a car. So ya, the TTC ain’t all that bad from my viewpoint.

“Whether the TTC will actually do anything about your problems is hard to say”

On behalf of all 501 Queen users, and especially those in the west end who have been calling for a restoration of the 507 Long Branch car to Dundas West, all I can say is that the TTC management won’t change.

I don’t blame the operators for a lot of the issues – although some are better are communicating issues than others are – for example, at the earliest possible point the destination sign has to be changed. This usually occurs, but not always.

Recently, I saw 9 King St streetcars come in a row at John St. It took them all forever to cross it and at least one of them ran a red light. Last year, I saw 11 route 36 buses waiting at the loop all with their doors closed when about 100 people waiting in the freezing cold just to get in at that one stop only with huge crowds at every bus stop on the way.

Steve, “our friends at CIS Control probably have a lot to do with problems.”

I repeatedly see streetcars and buses running red lights. How is that the fault of the people in the control room? I also see buses speeding especially at night. Recently on the 53 bus around 23:30 going west, the driver was going so fast that when he slammed on the breaks before the red light, the bus failed to stop until well past the intersection at Victoria Park (the light had already been red before the bus started crossing). So many times, drivers have failed to stop while I waited for the bus in the freezing cold even though the buses had enough room. And so many times at railway crossings drivers don’t stop completely when they are supposed to do so. If the supervisors / controllers are at any fault for any of this, it is that they fail to keep the drivers on their toes.

Steve: My reference is to short turns of services running on very wide headways that cause huge gaps and loss of service to riders. CIS Control is notorious for only caring about getting operators back on time with no feel for “on the street” service.

The one customer service issue on the subway that is 100% in the TTC and Union’s control is the shift changes/crew changes part way through a subway run.

(that and streetcar drivers going 10 km/hr so they are done their shift in the right location)

Having an entire train of customers sitting idle for 1-5 minutes while a crew is changing trains is not very customer friendly. Why are the employee contracts/TTC policies not flexible enough to bank hours so that all crew changes occur at the end of the subway lines?

Some people may state that 1-5 minutes isn’t that much of an inconvenience but we want reliable transit (which includes punctual service). The customer should always come first (and not the management and employees and finally customers).

Steve: Those crew changes in the middle of the line are actually intended to avoid short turning the trains while getting operators back on time. What will be challenging when the TTC moves to one person crews on YUS is that it will not simply be an across the platform exchange, but a walk the full length of the platform (plus stairs up and down for side platform stations). The tactic won’t work as well in those cases.

As for banking overtime, the problem that brought the high overtime premium in the first place is that service was chronically late and overtime was happening almost all of the time, sometimes interfering with scheduled breaks. Being late for a crew change also affects the next crew who would start off late and probably would be even later by the end of their scheduled work.

Scheduling extra time leads to problems with queues of trains at terminals (or the equivalent, major bunching at terminals. This is a complex problem.

Steve was sarcastic when he said he is not here to bash operators and control tower staff.

Steve: No, I was not. Some operators, and some supervisory staff operate and manage routes in ways that do not work for the best interests of riders. Others are quite good. The problem is the inconsistency.

You, on the other hand, routinely leave comments that I delete because they make unfounded statements of your own opinions rather than contributing to the discussion.

Steve, with your contacts and profile, you don’t have to use these forms. For the rest of us, there are some severe drawbacks to using them.

1. Because it’s an online form, it’s not possible to CC anyone, e.g. Councillors, advocacy groups, community groups.
2. You receive no record of your comment, even if you’ve left your e-mail address when filling it out.
3. There is no tracking number issued (unlike, say, 311). Once you’ve submitted, the comment/request/complaint goes to who knows where. /dev/null is quite possible.
4. Even if you set “Response Required” and provide your contact information, the chances of someone getting back to you are not good. I think I have been 0 for 3, or however many I’ve sent.
5. Without tracking info, how can you follow up when they don’t get back to you?
6. The forms are set up for complaining about a specific incident. They are obviously not for chronic issues. I suspect that as soon as the issue is bigger than “the operator of streetcar 4009 didn’t let me on!” is where the comment falls through the cracks and disappears.

In short, the feedback forms are, in my experience, useless. I haven’t heard anyone say differently. The one time I got a good response was when I complained straight to Giambrone when he was Chair of the TTC.

Steve: The point I was trying to make was that the statement that the TTC had no way of accepting online complaints was, shall we say, misleading. I don’t like online forms, and the TTC often designs feedback pages (including some surveys) that are very poorly set up.

Nothing prevents you from cutting and pasting the text of your complaint into a “cc” to other parties.

Probably the most telling statistics in the monthly CEO report is that the largest topic of complaint is “other”. When asked, the TTC says that this is a collection of many small categories, but if collectively they are the biggest single group, they need to be broken out.

I agree that at the very least an auto reply including a copy of your note should be sent out. This is a common approach for such forms, and it provides documentation that the comment is received and a copy of what you typed.

For the benefit of non-IT readers, “/dev/null” is a destination for output from a program you don’t want most of the time. It is a black hole.

Though I completely agree that the current TTC customer feedback form(s) are very poorly designed, I have used them and HAVE received feedback; by both email and telephone.

For a start there are three links on the “Contact us” page “Compliments, Complaints and Suggestions”

• On-line form: Compliments, Complaints and Suggestions

All three links go to the same page! Then the form itself requires one to complete fields, in a defined way, that often have no relevance. If you are complimenting or complaining about a specific event of course you need to identify the date and time. If you are making a suggestion you really don’t. If you say the communication is “for information only” you really should not need to give contact information. Like many TTC initiatives, the ideas are good, the execution is poor.

“1. Because it’s an online form, it’s not possible to CC anyone, e.g. Councillors, advocacy groups, community groups.
2. You receive no record of your comment, even if you’ve left your e-mail address when filling it out.
3. There is no tracking number issued (unlike, say, 311). Once you’ve submitted, the comment/request/complaint goes to who knows where. /dev/null is quite possible.
4. Even if you set “Response Required” and provide your contact information, the chances of someone getting back to you are not good. I think I have been 0 for 3, or however many I’ve sent.
5. Without tracking info, how can you follow up when they don’t get back to you?
6. The forms are set up for complaining about a specific incident. They are obviously not for chronic issues. I suspect that as soon as the issue is bigger than “the operator of streetcar 4009 didn’t let me on!” is where the comment falls through the cracks and disappears.”

1) Anyone who has submitted a complaint asking for a response learns that the e-mail address is ttcfollowup@ttc.ca I’d think if one really wanted to CC all those people, one could probably initiate the complaint by e-mailing that address – they are quite flexible. Though surely if that many people’s involvement is necessary, it’s well beyond a Customer Service issue. Why not just phone customer service and ask for an appropriate e-mail address?

2) No you don’t. That would be useful, personally I e-mail myself a print-screen of my request, the text of my comment, and the reference number they automatically assign when you press submit.

3) I’ve always received (well, since they improved the service a couple of years ago) a reference number when I press the submit button. While this doesn’t match the reference number of their response, TTC staff can cross-reference.

4) You’ve requested a response and not received one? Recently? This was a problem a few years ago, but this is not my experience. I must have submitted a dozen last year asking for a response (and more where I didn’t ask … don’t need a response when you simply tell them that car 1234 has a broken speaker). I do track my submittals and I think it was a 100% response last year.

5) You use the reference number you get when you press the submit button. Have you done this since they improved customer service?

6) I’ve had no problems raising chronic issues, and they’ve even provided loading factors and passenger counts on occasion when I’ve raised a detail issue. Though I don’t seem to have gotten too far on the “what do you mean you’ll try and follow the schedule better, isn’t that the root cause of the short-turns?” thing … though at that point, it might be best to contact other than Customer Service. It’s not difficult to obtain either Byford’s or Upfold’s e-mail address. Or to encounter them at public events. I bet you could even phone them (though I haven’t tried).

To a great extent though, chronic issues are for Toronto Council. There’s only so much blood you can get from a stone, if it’s something that’s going to require significant funding increases.

Well, I never noticed a reference number when I submitted. You can blame me (the user) or the system (design of the feedback page).

Of course copying and pasting your submission is possible, but with the way the information is laid out in multiple fields, getting a record of a complaint about a specific incident will require copying and pasting multiple fields and adding your own field names (unless those can be copied too).

The lack of a demonstrable date for your complaint is another issue.

And yes, I have put in two complaints/requests about the removal of the 39th St. stops on Lake Shore, asking what consultation was done and what passenger counts show that the stop was “lightly used”. I am 0 for 2 with the TTC and 1 for 3 with the local Councillor. My request was polite, but I’m asking questions to which, I suspect, they have no good answers.

I did have some success with the online comment form. I suggested a new stop at South Kingsway for the 80 Queensway and 77 Swansea buses to parallel the streetcar stop and after a year of slow progress it was built.

In my experience, in most cases calling the customer service number is a waste of time, this includes YRT and TTC. The operators on these lines are essentially paid to get you off the line, with as little satisfaction as possible.

Several years ago in the subdivision I was living in, the bus at the top of the street was notorious for being off schedule. Most days it was 10 minutes late at best – except for when you tried to match that, then it would be on time or early. Looking at the paper schedule, it showed a scheduled stop a couple of kilometers up route (my specific stop was not listed) that I figured that as long as I left the house by that time, I should catch it. Keep in mind that like most YRT services, it only came by once every 30-60 minutes at best.

Well I am leaving my house and I see the bus go by. To pass by at the time it did, it would have had to pass that checkpoint at least 5 minutes early. I call the customer service number, and they tell me that I need to be at the stop x minutes early (we’ll say 10, can’t remember the specific number though). Now to get to the frequent bus I transfer on to is a 20 minute walk, and a quite bland one at that. The bus ride itself to this transfer point was about 10 minutes.

So my options were to either walk 20 minutes on a journey through suburbia about as stimulating as watching paint dry to Yonge to catch the bus there, or walk 2 minutes to the top of the street to be 10 minutes early to catch a bus that is 15 minutes late to ride 10 minutes to Yonge (37 minutes total).

Keep in mind to drive to Yonge took about 3-4 minutes tops, since you could take a more direct route…

Anyways I sent them an email, mentioning that while I understand I should be early for the bus, it still shouldn’t be beyond a checkpoint up route so far ahead of schedule. Rather than having my complaint be answered by some phone jockey in a call centre, it was addressed by a route manager who investigated the situation. Apparently the bus wasn’t 5 minutes early… it was 45 minutes late! She said she would get more management on the line to improve on time performance. After this incident, the route became much more reliable.

Well excuse me, but how can any like to live in Toronto if the wrong transit plans are always approved (Spadina subway extension and Scarborough subway) the correct ones are cancelled or are near cancelled (Scarb LRT, and status Finch and Sheppard unknown plus the rest of transit city).